Anti-slavery Almanac:
Lawless " burning of men " by the many. (1840)
(The American Anti-Slavery Society published the almanac
yearly from 1836 to 1843.)

"We were not supposed to abandon all hope here."

Every bully dreams of anarchy, believing themselves immune from the inevitable harm that always accompanies Lawlessness. Their so-called success always proves temporary when they succeed, for the bullies always manage to do the most damage to themselves under such regimes. Without rules or line judges, they tend toward excesses that not even they can ultimately tolerate. Further, there is no respite when every man, woman, and child decides they're a despot. Vigilance starts against vilified groups but soon extends to include former friends and even relations. When agreements can be blithely ignored, everyone's imperiled, and no defensive force proves adequate to repel the wolves from any door. Periods of relative anarchy historically proceed periods of stricter order. The comeuppance comes as a kind of penance never soon forgotten. Vestiges of that innate wildness remain, of course, or we wouldn't be human, by which I mean, or else we wouldn't be wild animals. We never were as civilized as we'd hoped we'd be. It seems we're only decently respectful toward each other after we've committed some significant sin together. Armistices celebrate a temporary end to evil more than the beginning of good.

Our incumbent was always dangerous because he refused to follow prescribed rules. He wouldn't pay his debts, and then he’d stiff the courts. He thumbed his nose at propriety, pretending those rules didn't apply to him. He often lost but never once performed penance. His fines were never commensurate with his crimes, and civil society could never properly assess adequacy when attempting to encumber the wealthy. He'd pay pennies on the dollar when he paid at all then continue with his punishers none the wiser. He swindled them the same way he swindled the system. Were he honorable, he might have been embarrassable. I suspect he considered everyone his patsies, privileged to help him take mean advantage of their good nature. When he declared that the laws didn't pertain to him, he was not being boastful but truthful. If he never uttered another truth, that one was immutable. In this respect, he represents perfect evil. He never once appeared to feel any human emotion or muster an ounce of sympathy for any of his many, many victims. His thirst was, by any accounting, unquenchable.

He attracted people like him, those incapable of maintaining moral fiber. Each had been compromised earlier and found a common bond among similar sinners. Each had found that the law requested their compliance but had little response to violations. They couldn't necessarily get away with murder, but they could shamelessly cheat on their taxes and even justify the theft under some misguided Robin Hood interpretation of the rules. They observed a self-proclaimed higher power! The ecosystem of the very wealthy couldn't countenance communalism, ignorantly equating it with communism, socialism, and hedonism. They considered it the very height of propriety to illegally hide their income in numbered accounts in shady Cayman Island and Panama-resident institutions. It was rumored that Brexit happened when the EU attempted to crack down on illegal tax havens the wealthy maintained in the Channel Islands. Had the EU successfully incorporated those accounts onto its tax lists, Britain's wealthiest would have been compelled to pay their fair share of taxes for the first time ever. Fortunately for them, Brexit plunged Great Britain into a permanently lesser role, but at least the very wealthy were kept secure even if the public health service went to Hell. (Hold the handbaskets.)

There might be nothing the wealthiest will not do to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. They rightfully protest, imagining themselves the true inheritors of The Sons of Liberty's responsibilities. They alone see themselves positioned to judge ultimate righteousness. They believe most government expenditures to be fraudulent and inherently corrupt and, therefore, must be cut. They imagine themselves worthy of exemption from most responsibilities associated with government, other then the sacred responsibility to tell others how to live, as if that were a proper function of government. They revile government as the primary means by which their wealth gets appropriated. They despise all dependents and do not even wish them well. They increasingly publicly wish them to Hell. They do not wish to be compelled to care. They parse the world as a zero-sum game that they're winning. Those who lose are supposed to leave the island. They gleefully, if illegally cut budgets keeping sick children alive and won't even think to send flowers to the funerals. They will privately insist instead that they are probably better off dead.

Faced with such crocodile righteousness, we're rightly flummoxed over a response. The People's Justice Department has been compromised. The courts, perhaps ineffectual. The incumbent attempts to get any judge who rightfully rules against their perverse interests removed. Congress has yet to prove it hasn't been just as compromised. Law will one day return, but perhaps only after we accumulate enough reason for genuine remorse over what we've done to ourselves again. Throughout history, lawlessness mustered its own punishment, and this instance should prove to be no different. History stands beyond any individual's or group's insistence. It alone holds the patterns: people, countries, societies, perhaps merely players. We stand to lose no more than we've ever stood to lose. Confident that Lawlessness always sows the seeds of its destruction, we can watch the inevitable disintegration. Some new insight or invention might turn around this terrible turn of events. The bastards will probably not spontaneously turn into angels. We were not supposed to abandon all hope here.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz